Opinion

Talk about the direct election of presidents bubbles up around every quadrennial election. This year was no different. Liberals say the constitutional mechanism for picking presidents, the Electoral College, is outdated. They claim it depresses voting in non-battleground states and raises the possibility of electing presidents unable to govern because they don't represent the national popular will, don't command at least a popular-vote plurality or both. The election that sticks hardest in their craw is 2000's, when their candidate, Al Gore, won the popular vote but lost to George W. Bush in the Electoral College.

Liberals swaddle their arguments in "democracy," "disenfranchise," "one man, one vote," and "the will of the people." This time around, they have been persuasive enough to secure Republican former Gov. John G. Rowland's endorsement and the support of 56 percent of Americans surveyed by Rasmussen Reports.

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Sandy Socks wrote on Dec 29, 2012 3:19 PM:

" As usual this newspaper looks at an issue, any issue, as' "What's better for Republicans" or conversely, "What's worse for Democrats.

The real issue is what's better for the country. Millions of voters in New York who wanted Romney to win had their votes discarded. Same for millions of voters in Texas who wanted Obama. But of course that doesn't matter to Pape and his toy.

Obama and Romney concentrated most of their money and energy in 10 swing states. Even then, both candidates only targeted less than 10% of voters there looking to make an impression on those "Undecided" folks.

Is candidates ignoring the overwhelming feelings and will of millions of Americans what this newspaper wants?

Sure, if it benefits Republicans.

I wouldn't wrap a dead fish in this newspaper for fear of embarrassing the fish. "

" CT is still disenfranchized because it's a winner-take-all state, which almost always votes majority Democrat; therefore all the votes for a Republican president are worthless. It all states were required to split their Electoral College votes proportional to the popular vote, it would more accurately reflect the will of the people. If this were the case in the last election, Obama would never have been elected. "

" Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in the country would get the 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. That majority of electoral votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in the country wins the presidency.

National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don't matter to their candidate.

And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state are wasted and don't matter to candidates. Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California‚Äôs population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).

With National Popular Vote, elections wouldn't be about winning states. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. Every vote, everywhere would be counted equally for, and directly assist, the candidate for whom it was cast.

Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states. The political reality would be that when every vote is equal, the campaign must be run in every part of the country.

When and where voters matter, then so are the issues they care about most.

A shift of a few thousand voters in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 14 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 7 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012). 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.

With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes, it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with a mere 23% of the nation's votes!

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states with 243 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions with 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

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